employees - The Cambridge Historical Commission Blog

Getting to Know Your CHC Staff: Part 5

Posted on September 20, 2018May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Welcome back to our ongoing series featuring the staff members who do wonderful work here at the CHC! This post introduces our new Survey Director, Eric Hill.

Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Amherst, New Hampshire a quaint, historic New England village with an abundance of Colonial homes.

Where did you go to school? What was your degree?

I went to the University of New Hampshire and studied Geography with a focus on urban and human geography. Immediately after graduating, I moved half way across the country to Norman, Oklahoma and attended the University of Oklahoma’s College of Architecture where I studied Regional and City Planning.

Amazing Collegiate Gothic architecture at OU.

What are your interests or hobbies?
My favorite thing to do is travel. My goal is to visit all major world regions by the time I am 30 years old (still have a couple years to go). Besides travelling, I enjoy watching documentaries, hiking, and photography.

Lourve — Photo from my most recent trip to Paris and London.

Name some fun facts about you.

I am a sports fanatic and follow all New England sports teams along with the Oklahoma Sooners Football program and Paris St. Germain for soccer.
During graduate school, I got the opportunity to spend a month in Lusaka, Zambia and worked with children, teachers and a non-profit to work on designs for new schools and it was an experience that I will never forget.

soccer, zambia — Before I got beat in soccer by kids half my age in Zambia.

When did you start working at the CHC?
I started working at the CHC in September of 2018 and previously worked for the Boston Landmarks Commission as a Preservation Planner.

Acorn Street in Beacon Hill Historic District. I was the Preservation Planner for the neighborhood while in Boston.

What do you like best about working at the CHC?
My favorite part (so far) about working at the CHC is learning about the rich history of Cambridge and the layers of development from the Native American settlements of the past to the high-rise mixed-use buildings and neighborhoods of today.
Do you have other professional pursuits?
I hope to dive deeper into the modern movement and post-war Cambridge and advocate for the preservation of the (in my opinion) underappreciated and less well-known architectural styles and typologies of the 1940s-1980s.

My favorite building (Kimbell Art Museum) by my favorite architect (Louis I. Kahn). Sadly, Louis I. Kahn did not have any projects in Cambridge.

Give us a glimpse into your daily work or a current project.
Currently, I am giving myself a crash course on the centuries of people, events and places that make Cambridge, Cambridge. I am also reading up on the district guidelines for the Half Crown-Marsh Conservation District as I will be the planner in charge of design review for it.
What is your favorite photograph, artifact, or collection at CHC?
So far, my favorite collection is the W. L. Galvin Collection due to the quality and quantity of old plans and drawings of projects built, unbuilt and demolished.

Memorial Theater_Galvin — (Cambridge Memorial Theater drawing, 1931)

What do you like best about living or working in Cambridge?
Cambridge is a melting pot of not only architectural styles and history, but of people and cultures. It is a great place to work and during my lunch breaks, I always make an effort to walk around and enjoy the various cafes, shops and neighborhoods.

Getting to Know Your CHC Staff: Part 4

Posted on August 21, 2018May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Welcome back to our ongoing series featuring the staff members who do wonderful work here at the CHC! This post introduces our Archivist, Emily Gonzalez.

Emily showing one of her favorite items from our collections – Motor Boot Spats once made by the Cambridge Rubber Company

Where did you grow up?

My family moved quite a bit, but I mainly grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. The East Coast feels like my home now, but I’ll always be a Midwestern gal.

emg-statefair — You haven’t lived until you’ve gone to the MN State Fair

Where did you go to school? What was your degree?

For undergrad I attended Lawrence University, a small school in Appleton, Wisconsin, and earned my BA in English Lit and Spanish. I did my graduate studies in Library Science and History at Simmons College here in Boston.

What are your interests or hobbies?

I love movies and documentaries, both old and new. I love visiting museums and historic sites, traveling, and trying out new restaurants. I just signed up to volunteer with Broken Tail Rescue, a local animal rescue organization, and I am super excited. About once a season I’ll force myself to run a road race (usually a 5k).

emg-grandpa — I love old photographs. This one is of my grandpa Les and his siblings on a farm in South Dakota.

emg-crossstitch — I also like cross-stitch, particularly the subversive kind. Image credit: http://www.subversivecrossstitch.com/

Name some fun facts about you.

I’m first-generation Cuban American, but I didn’t become fluent in Spanish until I was in college.
The summer after college I worked at a fast food kiosk inside of a zoo in St. Paul. It was called “Zooper Food.”

emg-zooper — Thanks for the free corndogs, Zooper. Image courtesy of Google.

My fiancé and I have a tuxedo cat named June. She rules the household.

When did you start working at the CHC?

November 2015.

What do you like best about working at the CHC?

No one day is like the other. There are always new research requests, collections to process, reorganize or digitize, and cool archival discoveries. I also love learning about the ins and outs of historic preservation through my colleagues.

Do you have other professional pursuits?

I’m an active member of the Society of American Archivists and New England Archivists, and I’m on the Collections Committee at the Cambridge Historical Society.

Give us a glimpse into your daily work or a current project.

A “typical” day could involve answering a research request, checking in with volunteers on their latest projects, discussing ongoing projects with my colleagues Meta and Emily, writing up text for promotional materials, emailing with other city departments or organizations about outreach activities, chatting about next year’s Cambridge Open Archives event, or meeting about the next steps in our big digitization project (“C-DASH”).

Because I manage our archives operation here, I don’t really do a lot of collections processing, so it’s nice when I do get to scan some historic photographs or reorganize a collection. I’m lucky in that I have such amazing archives assistants and colleagues, and that the CHC had library science interns and archives volunteers working on our collections for so long before I came here.

What is your favorite photograph, artifact, or collection at CHC?

I love the old restaurant menus in the Cambridge Ephemera Collection. The Wursthaus menu from August 6, 1962, is probably my favorite. Look at the “Businessmen’s Luncheon” – what a deal! [Note: The Wursthaus was a restaurant located at 4 Boylston Street, now JFK, in Harvard Square]

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(Cambridge Ephemera Collection, CHC002).

I also love images that capture great facial expressions, like this one from our Cambridge Recreation Department Collection (CHC011).

emg-recdept What do you like best about living or working in Cambridge?

The quirky, intelligent community and how much love they have for the City’s history.

emg-cambstreet

Getting to Know Your CHC Staff: Part 3

Posted on June 12, 2018May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

This month, we are highlighting our fabulous commission staff! We would like you all to learn more about our employees and the wonderful work they do here at the CHC. The third post in this series features Sarah Burks, Preservation Planner.

sarah_pic — Sarah and canine friend, Penny.

Where did you grow up?

I’m half Yankee and half Texan having grown up between Williamstown, Mass. and Wichita Falls, Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas but I am happy to have settled in New England where I have lots of family and you can’t cook an egg on the sidewalk in summer.

Where did you go to school? What was your degree?

I got my undergraduate degree in Art History from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. My graduate studies Historic Preservation Planning were at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

What are your interests or hobbies?

I like old things. That’s what drew me to historic preservation as a career so I could work with old buildings. I enjoy collecting antiques and vintage items for the same reason. I keep a toe in the art history side of things by serving on the board of trustees of the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum in Arlington, Mass. Cyrus Dallin sculpted many famous public sculptures around Boston including Paul Revere (North End), Appeal to the Great Spirit (MFA), and Anne Hutchinson (State House).

dallin — The Paul Revere Monument in Boston’s North End. Sculpture by Cyrus E. Dallin.

Name some fun facts about you.

I love dogs. I play bridge. I like Spurs basketball.

When did you start working at the CHC?

I started fresh out of grad school in the fall of 1996. I was two.

What do you like best about working at the CHC?

It’s something different every day. A different building, architect, or historical topic to investigate.

lechmere_natl_bank — This photo of Cambridge Street at Third Street (looking east) shows the Lechmere National Bank on the far left. This building was recently designated a Cambridge Landmark by the City Council.

Give us a glimpse into your daily work or a current project.

I type a lot of minutes and process a lot of permits. But my favorite thing is when I can dive into a research project or assist someone else in finding what they need for their own research. Recently I was documenting the diner cars of Cambridge. You can learn more about this in our blog post: New! Lunch Carts and Dining Cars of Cambridge, Mass.

This picture has it all: a Cambridge diner, vintage automobiles, and eclectic old buildings.

What is your favorite photograph, artifact, or collection at CHC?

Soon after I started at CHC, I was invited to join the Cambridge Women’s Heritage Project, an informal group dedicated to documenting Cambridge women, historical events, and women’s organizations. We have a lot of biographical files on women and women’s organizations. I’m currently researching Cambridge suffragists so we can have a good idea of Cambridge’s role in the suffrage movement prior to 2020, the hundredth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

f_lusc — Florence Luscomb of Cambridge sells *The Woman’s Journal* newspaper and advocates for woman suffrage.

Thank you to Sarah for answering our questions–stay tuned for more staff bios coming soon!